Join us again for more Kingdom Hospital? Nah. (Stephen King Presents: Kingdom Hospital (4 DVDs))

Member Name: Mildew82

Product:	Stephen King Presents: Kingdom Hospital (4 DVDs)
Date:	22/08/09 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quite humerous with a good main plotline

Disadvantages: Too bizarre and fails with any real horror

Kingdom Hospital was developed by Stephen King as a 13 episode mini-series based upon a 1994 Danish mini-series called The Kingdom (Riget in Danish) by Lars Von Trier, who also helped produce this US version. Whilst the concept was based upon Lars Von Trier's original show, Stephen King either wrote or co-wrote all of these episodes.

The series is based upon the strange goings on at The Kingdom Hospital located on the old site of the Gates Falls Mill - a mill that burnt down in 1869:

"Most of the adult mill workers escaped."

"Most of the children...most of the children did not."

Sounds like the premise for something truly terrifying - especially being born from the mind of the horror king himself (pun intended), but actually Kingdom Hospital is more of a horror/comedy which occasionally errs on the silly side.

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The Plot
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It's difficult to describe just one plot for Kingdom Hospital as there are just so many sub-plots all intricately interwoven to make up one big confusing plot - but here goes anyway in no particular order:

Sub-plot 1

In the opening episode we meet Peter Rickman, a famous artist, who is horrifically injured in a hit-and-run accident and transferred to - you've guessed it - Kingdom Hospital. Despite suffering great head trauma his thought are clear (which we are privy too), but he is unable to communicate with the outside world. Instead, in a comatose like state he finds himself wandering the abandoned halls of a Kingdom Hospital seemingly from a different realm - the Old Kingdom. But he is not alone down there...

Sub-plot 2

We also meet Sally Drusse, a psychic whose son Bobby Drusse works as an orderly at Kingdom Hospital, a hypochondriac renowned around the hospital as having a habit of developing new and mysterious symptoms just to be admitted. She can sense all is not right at the hospital and is aware of several spirits that haunt the hospital including a little girl, a tortured and deranged boy who had been subjected to unspeakable experiments in the Old Kingdom, and of course the token Anteater. I mean honestly, what TV show can even conceive of running without a talking Anteater wandering about hither and thither?

Sub-plot 3

Next is Dr Hook (played by the 80s heartthrob Andrew McCarthy last seen carrying a mannequin off under his arm), the handsome, suave and slightly sardonic doctor who is one of the few normal members of staff at the hospital. He is a member of the hospital's secret society "The Keepers" and has made it a mission to expose incompetence and negligence in the medical profession, even if that includes himself and his friends, and he particularly enjoys subtly antagonising Dr. Stegman which leads us onto...

Sub-plot 4

Dr Stegman is a highly strung and excessively stressed out individual which does lead to some enjoyable comedic moments. Desperate to become a member of "The Keepers", but constantly foiled by his own buffoonery and a few pesky malpractice suits, Dr Stegman finds life increasingly difficult at the hospital. It won't take much to push him over the edge....

Sub-plot 5

The final obvious sub-plot is between Dr Elmer Traff, an immature young doctor, and the older, wiser Dr Lona Massingale whose expertise lies with sleep anomalies. Whilst constantly trying to resist his flirtatious advances, Dr Massingale find out there may be more going on in the vacuous head of Dr Traff when he volunteers for one of her sleep studies.

Alongside all these sub-plots each episode also has a stand-alone plot, some of which are relevant to the master plot and some which are not, but all newly admitted patients each undergo their own weird experiences at the hand of the spirits haunting the hospital - some more perilous than others.

There are a few other vital characters that pop up, from Otto the German security guard with his beloved dog Blondi (hmm...what was Hitler's dog's name again?), Abel and Christa - two orderlies with Down's Syndrome who uncannily know everything that is going on at the hospital in both realms and Dr Jesse James - a member of The Keepers who only seems to care about his Operation: Morning Air project.

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The Cast
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Andrew McCarthy - Dr. Hook
Bruce Davison - Dr. Stegman
Jack Coleman - Peter Rickman
Suki Kaiser - Natalie Rickman
Diane Ladd - Sally Druse
Sherry Miller - Dr. Lona Massingale
Jamie Harrold - Dr. Elmer Traff
Del Pentecost - Bobby Druse
Julian Richings - Otto
Ed Begley Jr. - Dr. Jesse James
Brandon Bauer - Abel Lyon
Jennifer Cunningham - Christa
Jodelle Ferland - Mary Jensen
Allison Hossack - Dr. Christine Draper
Kett Turton - Antubis / Paul

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Episode Listing
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1. Thy Kingdom Come

2. Death's Kingdom

3. Goodbye Kiss

4. The West Side of Midnight

5. Hook's Kingdom

6. The Young and the Headless

7. Black Noise

8. Heartless

9. Butterfingers

10. The Passion of Reverend Jimmy

11. Seizure Day

12. Shoulda Stood in Bed

13. Finale


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My Opinion
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The DVD itself has a quite unsettling and disturbing title page with some haunting and eerie music, which is actually quite beautiful and not too annoying. This is very important for occasions when you get distracted and end up leaving the title page on as the music loops round endlessly. If the theme tune is highly irritating this can lead to moments of great insanity - a mistake I made when I inadvertently left Jonathan Creek running for nearly an hour and one which the DVD player has since lived to regret.

So, with a suitably unnerving start, this is continued into the first episode with equally twisted opening credits that do lead you into believing this is going to be a genuinely disturbing show. Then following this up with the chilling tale of a tragic mill fire (narrated by William Morgan Sheppard who has a voice well suited to delivering the tale with grim delight) leaving enslaved children to die horrible deaths really sets the tone for a proper scary story.

Sadly, this is not the case.

I think there were genuine attempts to make this show scary. With the sounds of children crying and fleeting visions of a ghostly Mary popping up here and there, the hospital (and only the hospital) being subjected to increasingly bad earthquakes with lights flickering on and off etc, the dark Old Kingdom running in parallel to the New Kingdom with scary, unknown entities lurking around - sounds like it should be scary, but it just falls a bit flat.

Another attempt at scariness occurs with both our spirits Mary and Paul dressed in suitable 19th Century garb but with a horrible deathly tint about them, a really macabre psychotic doctor just itching to try out a new (murderous) experiment on his next patient (victim) and of course our friendly Anteater Antubis who can turn violent and show his bizarrely sharp teeth - wait a minute - anteater don't have any teeth - how anatomically insulting.

Sadly, Antubis is as scary as a sloth crawling toward you with a feather duster as a murder weapon - as you casually walk away you wonder if it is really possible to be tickled to death by a sloth. Sorry, my mind seems to have wandered off on a wild tangent - probably something to do with the excessive weirdness of Kingdom Hospital.

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The excessive weirdness of Kingdom Hospital
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For me, it is this excessive weirdness that brings the show down. It's clearly not scary enough to be taken seriously in the horror genre, and is just too ridiculous to be taken seriously in the comedy genre. For me these are the most ridiculous elements of the show that leave me feeling a little disappointed:

Hearing the thoughts of animals - an attempt at humour which is just plain silly.

Headless corpses running around the Old Kingdom searching for their heads to Basement Jaxx's song Where's Your Head At - any body wearing a hospital gown with the threat of indecent exposure at any moment is always going to be a little silly, but here it was just plain silly.

A nurse that faints at the sight of blood - maybe it was mildly amusing the first time...

The sporadic bursting out into song - how un-silly for the staff of Kingdom Hospital to suddenly start singing Kiss Him Goodbye (Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye) whilst the patient being operated wakes up and joins in.

Sadly, there is much more excessive weirdness, but I don't want to bore you anymore.

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The good bits
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There were a few positives for Kingdom Hospital. Once you removed all the excessive and unnecessary weirdness there was actually quite a good ghost story hidden under it all which, had just this storyline been maybe a two hour long episode rather than a 13 part series, could have actually been genuinely scary and well worth watching.

I particularly liked the character of Mary, portrayed admirably by the child actress Jodelle Ferland who could flit from a scared kid, to a traumatised kid to a brave kid in the blink of an eye, plus the characters of Paul and Dr Gottreich who successfully came across as sinister and terrifying respectively.

The acting was pretty decent by all, and the episodes did contain enough humour to make them entertaining - particularly anything revolving around the public humiliation of Dr Stegman, but it was often just too random to really make each episode make sense.

There were a few moments where an episode could get quite tense, but inevitably something just plain silly would happen to go and spoil it all.

Ummm...that's all I can come up with for now.


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The DVD
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No. Of Discs: 4
Classification: 15
Run Time : 580 minutes

Special Features:

Inside the walls: The Making of Kingdom Hospital
Filmmakers' Commentary
3 Featurettes

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Conclusion
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Kingdom Hospital is a show that started with great potential, but just seemed to lose its way as the episodes progressed (as reflected by the drop in ratings from 14 million in the first episode down to a low of 2.4 million towards the end). It failed completely as a horror story (especially surprising when written by Stephen King) and was just a little too bizarre to really work as a horror comedy.

There was a genuinely good story hidden in the constantly nonsensical sub-plots, which is quite satisfying at the end, but most irritatingly the final episode did seem to leave the show unnecessarily open for a second season, but due to the low ratings this was not commissioned (thankfully).

I think if you were looking for a good horror series to watch you should avoid this, but if you don't mind something completely quirky and totally out there you may well enjoy this series, but it wasn't for me.

Summary: Not recommended if you're looking for true horror, but okay if you want something weird